The 91探花 is proud to announce that 47 faculty and researchers who completed their work while at 91探花have been named on the annual list from Clarivate.

The highly anticipated annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.

The list of faculty and researchers who were acknowledged for their work while at 91探花includes:

• David Baker
• Frank DiMaio
• William Sheffler
• Dr. Jay Shendure
• Cole Trapnell
• David Veesler
• Alexandra C. Walls*
• Philip Mease
• Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray
• Dr. Ganesh Raghu
• Dr. Stanley Riddell
• Alejandra Tortorici
• Dr. William A. Banks
• Gregory N. Bratman
• Steven L. Brunton
• Guozhong Cao
• William A. Catterall
• David H. Cobden
• Riza M. Daza
• Dr. E. Patchen Dellinger
• Dr. Janet A. Englund
• E. Erskine
• Michael Gale Jr.
• Raphael Gottardo
• Celestia S. Higano
• Neil P. King
• Ali Mokdad
• William S. Noble
• Julian D. Olden
• L. Patrick
• David L. Smith
• Dr. Piper Meigs Treuting
• Spencer A. Wood
• Jesse R. Zaneveld
• Ning Zheng
• Dr. Hans D. Ochs
• Simon I. Hay
• Evan E. Eichler
• Deborah A. Nickerson**
• John A. Stamatoyannopoulos***
• Dr. Thomas J. Montine****
• Di Xiao
• Xiaodong Xu
• Bryan J. Weiner
• Mohsen Naghavi
• Theo Vos
• David M. Pigott

The that determines the 鈥渨ho鈥檚 who鈥� of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It also uses the tallies to identify the countries and research institutions where these scientific elite are based. This year Clarivate partnered with Retraction Watch and extended the qualitative analysis of the Highly Cited Researchers list, addressing increasing concerns over potential misconduct.

The full 2022 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found online .

* now is at BioNTech SE.

** on Dec. 24, 2021.

*** now is at Altius.

**** now is at Stanford University.

When it comes to the well-being of coral reefs, for many years scientists focused on , an event that can endanger corals and the diverse marine ecosystems that they support. In bleaching, high temperatures or other stressors cause corals to expel Symbiodinium, the beneficial, brightly colored microbes that would normally share excess energy and nutrients with corals. Bleaching ultimately starves corals and endangers the entire reef ecosystem.

But over the last two decades, scientists have realized that other microbes are also critical for coral health, including communities of bacteria that live on coral surfaces and in their tissues. These bacteria constitute the coral microbiome. High temperatures 鈥� even below the threshold for bleaching 鈥� can coral microbiomes, leaving corals .

But scientists lack comprehensive data about the bacteria that make up the microbiomes of the more than 1,500 coral species worldwide. That is starting to change thanks to the , a collaboration among researchers at the 91探花 Bothell, Pennsylvania State University and Oregon State University. The team is studying the diversity of bacteria within corals and how it has changed over time.

In their first comprehensive survey of healthy corals, Nov. 22 in the journal , the team reports that coral bacteria are a surprisingly diverse bunch 鈥� and that different sections of the coral body can host unique communities of bacteria.

鈥淭his project represents one of the most comprehensive efforts to identify what kinds of bacteria are present in diverse groups of tropical corals, how the types of bacteria can differ over coral anatomy, and how the symbiotic relationships between corals and bacteria have changed over coral evolution,鈥� said senior and corresponding author , an assistant professor of biological sciences at 91探花Bothell.

Their findings reveal what a relatively healthy coral microbiome looks like in a variety of coral species, and how coral microbiomes have formed and evolved. Understanding the microbiome may even help predict which corals will survive heat waves or disease outbreaks.

鈥淛ust like the bacteria within our gut help us digest food and protect us from pathogens, the normal bacteria associated with corals can also help them process nutrients and help protect them against disease,鈥� said Zaneveld.

The team partnered with scientists at James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science to collect 691 small tissue samples from 236 different healthy corals along the Great Barrier Reef. The researchers took samples from up to three different tissues in each coral: the hard skeleton of calcium carbonite, the soft inner tissue and the outer mucus layer. The corals sampled included diverse species that have, in some cases, been evolving separately for tens of millions of years.

The researchers sequenced sections of DNA from bacteria in those tissue samples, which they used to identify the types of bacteria in healthy microbiomes for each coral species and tissue. They discovered that the mucus, skeleton and soft tissue all contain distinct microbial communities 鈥� and that the richness and diversity of bacterial species present differed greatly by tissue type. In general, the skeleton contained the greatest diversity of bacteria, a finding which surprised the team. They had been expecting the mucus, which coats the coral and forms a barrier between itself and the environment, to harbor the most diverse microbiome. Instead, the mucus microbiome was often the least diverse.

The team also discovered that coral species differed the most in the composition of their tissue microbiomes. While mucus microbiomes also differed by coral species, they were also strongly influenced by environmental factors such as location, temperature and depth. The major differences between coral species raised questions about the age of these associations between corals and their microbes, and how they have changed over time.

The researchers found that distantly related corals were more likely to have highly different microbiomes. Corals that were more closely related typically had similar microbiomes. This pattern, known as , was strongest for the microbiomes from inside the corals’ stony skeletons. Though the team discovered that many coral-bacteria associations are likely recent, at least four types of bacteria evolved together with certain groups of corals over millions of years.

Now the researchers hope to gather additional data on healthy coral microbiomes to learn why some species have strikingly different types of microbiomes and to investigate how tissues in the same coral establish and maintain different microbiomes.

鈥淲e want to understand what roles that different factors 鈥� such as the coral鈥檚 immune system or its environment 鈥� play in shaping the microbiome,鈥� said Zaneveld. 鈥淭hese answers could help us understand how the microbiome affects coral health, and what goes wrong when the corals are stressed.鈥�

Stony corals have been around for more than 400 million years, and today鈥檚 coral reefs shelter fish that and harbor . Stressors linked to climate change are already linked to . But simply studying coral microbiomes will not save reefs, Zaneveld said.

鈥淭he Great Barrier Reef is huge 鈥� roughly twice the size of the state of Washington 鈥� so there is probably no drug or beneficial microbe we can add to the water to save it,鈥� said Zaneveld. 鈥淏ut, we can save coral reefs by fighting back against climate change.鈥�

Only tackling the root causes of coral reef decline 鈥� through measures to slow climate change and reduce both overfishing and nutrient pollution 鈥� will ultimately help corals, he said.

鈥淎nd if we do, we can also save intricate bacterial symbioses that evolved over millions of years, and that may hold the key to new medical drugs that we would otherwise lose from the world forever,鈥� said Zaneveld.

Co-lead authors of the paper are postdoctoral researchers F. Joseph Pollock at Pennsylvania State University and Ryan McMinds at Oregon State University. Co-authors are Styles Smith and M贸nica Medina at Pennsylvania State University; David Bourne at James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science; Bette Willis at James Cook University; and Rebecca Vega Thurber at Oregon State University. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

###

For more information, contact Zaneveld at 425-352-3789 or zaneveld@uw.edu.

Grant number: 1442306

This microbiological version of the “” is a new paradigm suggested by scientists at the 91探花 Bothell and Oregon State University. It may suggest who would benefit most from screens to identify the microbes that reside in their gut, with implications for drug therapy, management of chronic diseases and other aspects of medical care.

On Aug. 24, the researchers published a in outlining their adaptation of the Anna Karenina principle for the microbial realm. The principle gets its name from the opening line of the novel “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

It turns out that this observation applies to perturbed microbiotas of humans and animals. When these microbiotas are unhappy, each is unhappy in its own way.

“This line of thinking started with studies of the microbiology of threatened corals,” said lead and corresponding author , an assistant professor of biological sciences at 91探花Bothell. “We found that several stressors made the types of bacteria on corals more variable, allowing blooms of different harmful bacteria on each coral.”

“We were struck by similarities to HIV/AIDs. After HIV suppresses the immune system, patients become vulnerable to opportunistic pathogens 鈥� but you can’t predict which one will infect any particular patient. It turns out that this microbial variation is a pattern common to many 鈥� though certainly not all 鈥� stressors and diseases, and occurs in helpful microbes as well as harmful ones.”

Before joining the 91探花Bothell faculty, Zaneveld was a postdoctoral researcher at OSU, working with assistant professor of microbiology . It was there that they formulated the idea that microbial communities might behave more in line with Tolstoy’s words than scientists had previously thought.

“When microbiologists have looked at how microbiomes change when their hosts are stressed from any number of factors 鈥� temperature, smoking, diabetes, for example 鈥� they’ve tended to assume directional and predictable changes in the community,” said Vega Thurber, who is also a corresponding author on the perspective. “After tracking many datasets of our own we rarely seemed to find this pattern but rather found a distinct one where microbiomes actually change in a stochastic, or random, way.”

Zaneveld and Vega Thurber worked with OSU doctoral student to survey the academic and research literature on microbial changes caused by perturbation. They found those stochastic 鈥� or random 鈥� changes to be a common occurrence, but one that researchers have tended to discard or bury deep in supplementary materials, rather than highlight in their reports.

“What’s amazing is how obvious these Anna Karenina principle effects are 鈥� if you’re looking for them 鈥� and how easy they are to miss if you’re searching for a more conventional pattern,” said Zaneveld. “When researchers have reported them, they’ve often assumed that they are a unique quirk of the microbiology of their disease of interest, rather than a more general phenomenon.”

Their work drew together diverse ideas and experiments from microbiome research 鈥� including observations from humans and other animals and across multiple human diseases. They propose new methods for analyzing microbiome data to identify situations where the Anna Karenina principle might be at work.

“When healthy, our microbiomes look alike, but when stressed each one of us has our own microbial ‘snowflake,'” said Vega Thurber. “You or I could be put under the same stress, and our microbiomes will respond in different ways 鈥� that’s a very important facet to consider for managing approaches to personalized medicine. Stressors like antibiotics or diabetes can cause different people’s microbiomes to react in very different ways.”

Humans and animals are filled with symbiotic communities of microorganisms that often fill key roles in normal physiological function and also influence susceptibility to disease. Predicting how these communities of organisms respond to perturbations 鈥� anything that alters the systems’ function 鈥� is one of microbiologists’ essential challenges.

Studies of microbiome dynamics have typically looked for patterns that shift microbiomes from a healthy, stable state to a “dysbiotic,” stable state; dysbiosis refers to any unusual configuration of the microbiome with negative consequences for the health of the host. By the Anna Karenina principle, the microbial communities of dysbiotic individuals vary more in composition than in healthy individuals.

The researchers found patterns consistent with Anna Karenina effects in other systems as well, such as the lungs of smokers. Since microbiomes also influence how patients respond to medical drugs, conditions that make the microbiome more variable 鈥� such as inflammatory bowel disorders 鈥� may also make more variable patients’ responses to drugs from digoxin to asprin.

But, to consider and test these possibilities, scientists must first discuss the Anna Karenina effect among themselves.

“This is the start of a conversation, and not all diseases will show these patterns,” said Zaneveld. “But when you see the same pattern everywhere 鈥� from corals enduring high temperatures to wild chimpanzees with suppressed immunity 鈥� it suggests we should pay very close attention to the mechanisms that produce it.”

“I hope that by drawing together these research findings from diverse areas, we accelerate the development of common tools and language to understand the role of chance in shaping the microbial part of ourselves.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

###

For more information, contact Zaneveld at 425-352-3789 or zaneveld@uw.edu and Vega Thurber at 541-737-185 or Rebecca.Vega-Thurber@oregonstate.edu.

Adapted from by the OSU .